A post at Betsy Lerner’s wonderful blog, today, asked why those of us afflicted with narrative disorder at a young age began to write. It sparked a memory of the very first time I ever showed my writing to anyone and, since upon leaving Japan this blog will return to focusing more on its original topic: writing and chasing publication, I thought I’d dip a toe into that more revealing and intimate pool of thought and share it.
I don’t remember when I first began to write, but I remember vividly the first time I showed my writing to anyone. It was in grade 2 (so, about 7yrs old?) and I had carefully written and illustrated a Miffy-like book to read to the prep class, which my friend and I were sent to do when we were giggling too much for Mr. Rochstein. The ‘book’ was about a small, yellow bird that lived in a tree (which had lots of individually drawn leaves, as I recall). At lunchtime, I showed it to my best friend who, clearly a born editor, said “But nothing happens.”
I remember being terribly disappointed, my heart sank to my toes, but back in class I read it again (with my head under my lift-top desk so the teacher wouldn’t see; remember when you thought they couldn’t see that the great slab of wood poking up into the air? LOL) and realized she was right! By the end of the day I’d drawn in a second tree with a second baby bird, and given my bird a mother who wouldn’t let my bird go to visit her friend in the other tree. The baby bird begged and begged then finally, after a few falls from the tree (how she 1. didn’t die and 2. got back to the top of the tree were glaring continuity errors) taught herself to fly across.
It wasn’t until year 9, when I thought I’d like to write the next “Dark is Rising” sequence, that I took a how-to write novels book out of the Star of the Sea library, and realized that I’d learned the first lesson of story structure, that day – not to mention the teaching power of feedback!
Because the whole point of blogging is to share knowledge, but taking a risk because this blog doesn’t get that many comments, I’d love to hear from you: How did you learn about beginnings, middles and ends?
